Originally posted by lazs2
his mom must be pretty tough if the only way to kill her was with a legal handgun.
leslie... the 2nd does not say "for the purpose of" anywhere... it is you who cannot read. it says that a well regulated militia is needed. It says that the peoples right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. We are of course breaking that amendment.
lazs
You're absolutely right Lazs. Sorry for the misunderstanding. The first part of my post was a quote Texace made. My follow up included a link on the 2nd Amendment, which explains in detail how constitutional scholars arrive at the conclusion that we, as citizens, do have the individual right to keep and bear arms.
It seems the militia preface is a
prefactory clause to the 2nd Amendment's main, or
operative clause. The prefactory clause does not modify or limit the operative clause in any way, and could have been left out alltogether without changing the meaning. It was included to simply emphasize that for a militia to be well regulated, citizens would need to be armed and ready for combat when needed.
It does not say or imply that only militias have the right to keep and bear arms. Militias and the army are state entities, and as such, are treated separately from individual citizens in the Constitution. As I pointed out before, powers are granted to the states, while
rights are applied to individual citizens. The Constitution is consistent in its wording concerning rights, and there is no reason to construe the meaning of the 2nd Amendment to be different from the other amendments. In fact, only in recent history, has the meaning ever been questioned at all.
Once again, sorry for the misunderstanding. Yes, I believe the 2nd Amendment prohibits Congress from infringing on citizens' rights to possess and use firearms. The gun-control people realise this, and are attempting round about schemes to accomplish their goals, i.e. suing gun manufacturers. Many states are now enacting legislation to curb bogus lawsuits.
One of the new tactics, and I'm surprised no one has mentioned it in here yet, has to do with the Campaign Finance Reform issue. One of the reforms proposed by Charles Schumer and company, has to do with making it illegal for an organization to run ads endorsing, or even mentioning positive attributes of a candidate for office, during an 8 week period prior to election time. This is a blatant violation of the First Amendment. Of course, the press, not being an organization, is allowed to endorse their candidates.
Just goes to show how far anti-freedom polititians are willing to go to achieve their goals.
Les
